End Times Archaon - Spoilerific Discussion

[Locke66]

The novel apparently went into stuff the end of the basic book didn't. Still not reason to believe it's Sigmar.

Well it specifically says that the speck of light "had once been a man". Maybe it means a man as in the difference between male and female or maybe and more likely imo as a human male. Of course it's speculation on who it is but Sigmar was the only god in mortal flesh present at the rift as well as being the Arch God of the "good side". It seems the most likely to me that if anyone is going to be sucked into a void rift and survive it's him.

Malekith is the only person we see in ET:A who actually loses his memory before he's torn into the rift, though that could just be an issue of point of view.

In the book Malekith is seemingly crushed by rubble while saving the Everqueen

The timeline "moved on a couple hundred years" doesn't make so much sense when you have a form floating for "eons" before it finds a world-heart.

The passage at the end of the novel says regarding the pinprick of light that "it fell for what might have been centuries". That could easily be a couple of hundred years. The definition of an eon/aeon is just an indeterminate very long period of time or geographical time period division. The novel seems to clarify it.

There's no "confirmation" that any humans survived, and the Elves relied on Lileath's pocket dimension, which, IIRC, got located by Chaos. Similarly, there's no "confirmation" all the Orcs were wiped out. Ditto the Ogres.

Agreed there is no obvious confirmation that any humans survived but if Sigmar did survive as I suspect then maybe his miracle was to bring some back. Any further information on what happened in Lileath's pocket dimension? In the novels it just says she lost contact with it.

The Orcs and Ogres in the book provide no information about what happened to them post apocalypse except that Gork was personally pushing Grimgor hard to stop Archons plan. Ogres as a faction seem finished given Grimgor killed Greasus Goldtooth and subjugated the remaining Ogres and it was heavily implied that he destroyed the Chaos Dwarfs as well ("Gork had shown him favour and given him strength enough to kick over the stuntie's towers and turn their ziggurat of black obsidian into rubble"). I somehow suspect that Gork was Plan A (kill Archon and stop the apocalypse) and Mork was Plan B (get the boyz somewhere else).

I think it's most likely they're resetting the world with a new look and the ability to change or add races without completely wiping out any of them.

I just don't agree. Unless they use "just before" End Times as a permanent setting for Warhammer or retcon the whole thing I think it's almost certain they will trim some of the races at the very least. They could have easily merged some races together and moved the story forward without destroying the Old World. In fact I presented an argument for that very idea but it was based around certain things having "plot armour" which proved not to be the case (e.g there still being a world at the end of it). The course they took speaks of something more drastic. Maybe I'm wrong but I doubt it. The problems with current Warhammer are well known by all.

There's not going to be a situation where they wiped out the Orcs and Goblins, that's insane. Especially after they did a major showing at the end. That would piss off a LOT of people. As for Skarsnik, he wandered off to go take over someplace after Gobbla was killed.

I agree it would seem insane but who knows (...really who saw the end of End Times coming?). That's why I asked where Skarsnik went because I was wondering if there was anything about where he ended up in terms of providing a continuity for Orcs & Goblins in the post-Warhammer world.

[Cap'nSmurfs]

It's Sigmar. Any other conclusion is too much of a reach.

(Until I'm proven horribly wrong!)

[Erik Setzer]

You can go with rumors all you want, but I'm not going to believe until I see it in print in a GW book that they'll have wiped out entire armies that people spent thousands of dollars on. One, maybe. Okay, I can see Bretonnia gone. I can see merging Elves and Undead in a way that lets people continue using current models. I can see smashing the Ogres back in with the Orcs and Goblins. I don't see them wiping out Dwarfs (especially so soon after doing a new book with new plastic kits... those new kits are the big thing). All of that sounds as believable and sensible as Outlandhammer.

[Punch Kick Punch Kick]

Thematically, it makes the most since to be Sigmar. I still sit down and read my 6th edition BRB and it'd just laden over and over with the story of Sigmar. His hammer sits on the front of every rule book. He's just an iconic, quintessential character integral to the game's central themes. The human bastion of civilization only came due to bloody fighting and a warrior barbarian king carving it out of a savage land. That's dark fantasy (get the "grim" **** out of fantasy; dark/Gothic fantasy is excellent).